I\u2019ve started using the \u201cmake coffee\u201d button on my coffee machine as a reminder to befriend Jesus. Honestly, these past few years are the first in which I\u2019ve had a consistent morning quiet time. My rationale: Mornings are first. God asks us to give Him the first fruits. When we acknowledge Him in the first things, we are more likely to acknowledge Him in the rest. Believe the hype. His love will overflow into the others in your life if He\u2019s the first person you talked to that day.<\/p>\n
Back to my coffee: First, I press the button, and I show up and start to pray \u201cLord, I offer myself to You\u201d just like it says to do in Romans 12:1, that we would offer ourselves as living sacrifices to God so that every act is an act of worship. Second, I imagine an onion. I imagine peeling away layers of all my roles and responsibilities and identities and struggles and say, \u201cWho I am is not primarily my roles: a widow, a mother, a teacher. I\u2019m not primarily my worry. I\u2019m not primarily outgoing. At the core of me, Lord, I am in You and You are in me.\u201d I do this to peel back everything so that I can find my core identity in Christ. I rest in that secure identity for a moment. I\u2019m more than my titles and responsibilities and worries. In Christ is who I am at the core. Third, I let my mind wander because I know my mind will wander to something that has captured my heart, and that is what Jesus wants to talk about. Our conversation is spontaneous and free and even a little bit random, just like a conversation with a good friend. Finally, I listen to Him. There\u2019s a prompting every time: some work He\u2019s set before me, some sin that needs to be confessed, some person who needs a word of encouragement. He always directs me to love.<\/p>\n
To summarize, these four steps are:<\/p>\n
Once you realize your primary needs for security and love are met in Christ, and you start befriending Him yourself, you\u2019re going to see Him as both your model for friendship and your strength to live it out. Only Jesus does everything that Scripture asks of a friend.<\/p>\n
Pause for a second. If that makes you think anything along the lines of Well, then Jesus is the only friend I need, let\u2019s sort that out right now. That state\u2014Jesus being your only friend\u2014is never what Jesus wanted. His perfect love compels us to reach out in love to others. This whole friendship-with-other-humans thing is not optional. His prayer in John 17 shows that His love moves from us and Him to us and Him and everyone else. This is why we have a church and why it\u2019s important to be a part of it. It\u2019s not just you and Jesus, and it was never supposed to be.<\/p>\n\n\t\t